Just posted this on FB...

[Bigmack]

All the talk tonight... the President, the Repubs, the pundits....
Nobody mentioned the obvious.
I can save us $1.7 Trillion over the next 10 years. Get the hell out of Iraq-istan. Then we could close the 268 US military bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea. There's over 800 overseas bases. Cost of those bases is $250 Billion a year. Close half of them and save $1.25 Trillion over the next 10 years. There...! I saved us $3 Trillion over 10 years. Easy, really. Now .... can we rebuild our infrastructure and take care of our own country?

[and-justice-for-all]

1. I have been saying that for years...

end ALL US overseas occupations.

[alp227]

3. what entitles us to have military bases all over the world? WWII?

and why do Canada and Mexico have no bases in the US?

[and-justice-for-all]

7. Have you not heard, the US is the world police...

and if I was Germany, Japan of any other occupied country, I would kick the US out. My German professor is very put off about her country still being occupied by the US.

[zippytheplatypus]

2. everything but Korea

They would kill each other and that would be our doing. We have to figure out some way to get them to sit down and figure out some viable long term peace treaty. It'll take years and its our fault in the first place so we have to fix it. Letting them go back to war isn't an option.

[Sirveri]

8. The DMZ base in Korea is nothing, it's for casus belli only.

It would literally be nothing more than a speed bump for the NK army. Most of the rest is air support and logistics so we can operate in that theater more easily.

[EFerrari]

4. What you said, Bigmack. n/t

[valerief]

5. But that money is going to rich people so they can be richer and that's

the most important thing in the world. We hoi polloi are just an afterthought.

[zippytheplatypus]

6. it all comes down to israel anyway..

Until someone has a long term answer to this godawful mess its all just wishing anyway. I'd love to hear anybody with anything that could possibly work without all out nuclear war. Anybody?

[BR_Parkway]

9. curious as to where you came up with those numbers - 13 bases in Germany are

already scheduled to close between now and 2015 - out of 58 current ones. There's 4 Air Force bases (counting the NATO one as ours), no naval bases and 1 Marine base.

Not saying that your premise is wrong, just that you're seriously undermining it with incorrect information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_installations_in_Germany

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_installations_in_Germany

[Bigmack]

11. I got the numbers here...

Number of bases... http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/global/100930/US-military-kadena-guantanamo-manas-incirlik

"The U.S. Defense Department has real estate in 46 countries and American territories, adding up to a whopping 837 overseas locations. It manages roughly 1,300 square miles, a combined area considerably larger than Rhode Island. Throw in bases within the territories and 50 states and you’ve got Ohio.

Bases in Germany here.... http://www.fpif.org/articles/too_many_overseas_bases

"we still have 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea. Others are scattered around the globe in places like Aruba and Australia, Bulgaria and Bahrain, Colombia and Greece, Djibouti, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, and of course, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — just to name a few."

- - - - - -
The bases in Germany .... some have been closed and some have been "re-aligned". If you combine 3 bases into one command, you get to count it as 1 base.

(Aside: For DU memebers only.... real numbers have no meaning to Tea-publicans generally. I try to be as fair as possible, but there's no sense in low-balling numbers they won't believe anyway.)

[OneGrassRoot]

10. Here ya go: RootsAction - How to Create 29 Million Jobs

The chief weakness in President Obama's jobs proposal is that it does not attempt to produce very many jobs. There's an obvious solution that goes many times further and doesn't cost a dime.

Every billion dollars that our government spends on the military produces (directly and indirectly) fewer jobs, and lower paying jobs than would the same billion dollars invested in a number of other industries or even in tax cuts for working people. (The University of Massachusetts' Political Economy Research Institute has done the math.)

Redirecting a fraction of our military spending to education, green energy, healthcare, and tax cuts would create a job for every unemployed or underemployed person in this country (29 million of them) as well as for those losing war industry jobs during this conversion. Such a shift would leave the military with more funding than it had 10 years ago.

Do we have a debt problem? An unemployment problem? Or just a war problem? Ask Congress to move the money.

http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4724

[LeftinOH]

12. Guantanamo: The stupidest, most pointless US overseas base. n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. But..but..we have to be protected from..(fill in Bogeyman here). K&R